Big-screen blind spot: 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day'

Once in a while, a movie slips under your radar. For about, oh, 20 years. In 'Big-screen blind spot,' we sit down with those 'classic' movies everybody but us has seen and give them the nostalgia critic treatment.

Confession: Until this week, I had never seen Arnold Schwarzenegger's most important work, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," aka the movie that probably got him elected governator of California. I've actually never seen the first movie either, but according to Ernest Wilkins, it can be summed up thusly: "Arnold Schwarzenegger is a robot."

Had I seen it in 1991 at the age of 6: I would have been terrified. This is a really excessively violent movie, and I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to spell, let alone understand, the concept of dystopia as a 6-year-old.

Now: Well, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is about 90 billion times stronger and craftier than anyone else in that psychiatric hospital, so I can see why they'd want her locked up in the name of patriarchy. (I also learned from Wikipedia that Arnold earned 12-15 times as much as Hamilton for this movie, which makes total sense, right?)

It's pretty funny to watch tiny Edward Furlong (as John Connor) teach Arnie how to act like a natural human. And it is entertaining to hear Ahnold say lines like, "Come with me if you want to live" in context. But really? The bad guy can turn himself into the floor, a knife, a crowbar, other people AND walk through bars, but he can't become a gun?

Overall, this movie pretty much seems to be "Back to the Future: Doomsday Edition," and no disrespect to James Cameron, but I really, really love "Back to the Future"—and not "T2." It's probably not something I'd watch again, but I can see why many generations of dudes adore it.